


Liminality

by EmbraceTheFlamingo



Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Light Angst, friendly bantering
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-17
Updated: 2020-06-17
Packaged: 2021-03-04 06:01:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,104
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24768949
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/EmbraceTheFlamingo/pseuds/EmbraceTheFlamingo
Summary: "The Fire Lord didn't sleep that night, but some nights are not made for dreams—they are made for being."When Aang finds himself struggling under the weight of his duties, it's Zuko that he turns to.
Relationships: Aang & Zuko (Avatar)
Comments: 11
Kudos: 128





	Liminality

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this story a while ago, not giving much credit to Zuko's infamous ponytail haircut from season one. Since then, I've seen a few posts on tumblr that highlighted its cultural significance, and now I realize that Aang of all people would probably never make fun of it, nor would Zuko take it so lightly, so... consider that bit of OOCness caused by my ignorance on the topic.

“You should really tighten your security.”

Zuko rolled off his bed and threw a kick that set his curtains on fire on pure instinct, before he caught sight of orange robes and realized the familiarity in the voice.

“Aang?”

The shadow jumped down the windowsill and into the room, where the moonlight uncovered him. Gentle, flowing arm gestures guided the water from the bottle on Zuko's nightstand to the curtains, quenching the flames, before straightening up. “Hello, Sifu Hotman,” the Air Nomad greeted with a formal bow, in perfect contrast with the mischievous tilt of his lips.

“Don't 'Sifu Hotman' me! What are you doing here in the middle of the night? Is it an emergency? Is everyone okay?”

“Everything is fine, though you might want to replace those,” Aang answered, pointing a thumb at the soaked, unhappy curtains behind him.

Zuko gripped his temper with figurative hands and held it very, very tight. “So, you are here—again, in my room in the royal palace, in the middle of the night—because...?”

Aang shifted on his feet and stared at the elaborate design on the carpet. The light in his eyes dimmed. “I was meditating and I felt like I had to be here for some reason, I guess.” He sighed, “I'm sorry I scared you.”

Aang had crossed who knows how many miles at night just to talk to him? Yeah, that was odd. And worrying. “It's okay. It was just... unexpected,” Zuko replied as he passed a hand through his hair and sighed tiredly. “Anyway, about your... feeling, I'm not really sure what you mean. I'm not having nightmares and nothing distressing is happening. My life hasn't changed much since the last time we spoke.”

“It hasn't, has it?” Aang murmured. He climbed on the bed and sat cross-legged on it.

Zuko claimed the remaining side by lying on it, then propped himself on one elbow. He wasn't good at this waiting game. “No one is trying to kill me. That I know of, at least, so it's not a middle-of-the-night problem yet,” Zuko tried. It was reassuring, right?

Aang was absently playing with the hem of his robe; he shrugged, still not speaking.

“Aang, please. Say something. I'm too tired for this,” Zuko said, waving a hand in Aang's general direction.

“Did you want to become Fire Lord?” Aang blurted out.

Zuko remembered, then and there and in a sudden way that was too close for comfort, the shock to his system when he'd been struck by Azula's lightning. “What?” he croaked.

“I mean, was it a conscious choice, or just something you felt you had to do because of your birthright or destiny or whatever?” He paused and lingered for a beat. “Azula chased the throne, but did you?”

“Why would you ask that? Of course I wanted to be Fire Lord,” Zuko snapped. “I trained all my life for this role.”

“Oh? I thought you'd trained for years just to capture me,” Aang teased, a shadow of his smirk appearing again as he flopped on the bed and rolled to lie on his back.

“Don't flatter yourself. You were only a mean to an end, Avatar,” Zuko announced without thinking, putting particular care in spitting out the last word with the proper amount of venom for old times' sake. It was familiar, this game of poking at each other and pretending to still be enemies; it allowed Zuko to shake off the static still clinging to his nerves, though Aang's volatile behaviour unsettled him. “Seriously, though... why did you ask?”

Aang's sigh seemed to be drawn from the bottom of his very soul. He lay still, except for the hand that toyed with the string of beads around his neck, rolling them between his slender fingers in a steady rhythm. “I can't enter the Avatar State anymore.” His voice was fragile and thin as glass. “I'm a failure.”

Ah. That was... a lot. A lot of a not very good thing.

Zuko hadn't quite learned yet how to act around distressed people, but this was Aang, and for him he was willing to push aside his own awkwardness and do his best to lend an ear and pick the words that felt, if not just right, at least less wrong than the rest.

Besides, failure had been Zuko's companion for most of his life—that particular flavor of self-deprecation wasn't lost on him, so his answer was honest and soft. “You're not a failure, Aang... bending can be unpredictable, it's just how it is sometimes. When did this happen? If we find out what's wrong, we can fix this.”

“Everything is wrong, Zuko. I'm not sure I can be right anymore. I'm not sure anyone can fix me,” Aang whispered.

Zuko looked at his friend—really looked. With only the Moon to shed light on Aang's face, his stormy grey eyes turned an ethereal shade of silver. They shone with unshed tears and stared at the ceiling. He was gritting his teeth, chest rising and falling with quick, struggling breaths, clinging to air in a desperate effort not to drown in the rising tide of his own emotions. In that moment, Zuko understood on an instinctual level that he had to stay silent and let Aang ride it out: something was ruptured inside his friend's heart and even words of comfort were double-edged swords for a mind in turmoil.

He could still do something, though. Slowly, unhurriedly, he scooted closer and put his warm hand over Aang's, squeezing. The contrast between their temperatures—the Air Nomad's fingers were colder than he expected—grounded them both in reality as their gazes met.

Then Aang circled the Fire Lord's wrist with his free hand and pulled. Zuko lost his balance, falling on the mattress with an 'oomph' and very little grace; a moment later, he found his arms full of Aang as he was hugged fiercely. Aang's beard scratched his neck as the younger man started to shake uncontrollably.

“Everyone expects so much from me. The citizens, the spirits, even my friends—they ask and ask and ask. And I keep answering their calls, giving my all, trying to solve their problems, but it's never enough because I keep messing up. People die. Riots happen. Tyrants try to take control. I need to get into the Avatar State to help everyone, but I can't anymore, Zuko, I can't and I don't know what to do.” His voice was wet and broken and it stabbed Zuko's chest as thousands of ice shards. This scared, vulnerable side of Aang was terrifying, the proof that the hero who'd saved the world over and over was still human, still fallible. As Aang rode wave after wave of hopelessness, Zuko held him tight and stroked the back of his head, tracing the tattoo over and over with soft fingers, his steady breaths their only anchor in the storm.

The Fire Lord didn't sleep that night, but some nights are not made for dreams—they are made for being.

Morning light found him tangled with a dozing Avatar with dried tear tracks on his cheeks, and he discovered that tiredness doesn't come when your world is tilted and your soul is aligned. For the first time in so long, he was exactly where he was meant to be. For the first time in so long, he helped to take the burden off the shoulders of someone he loved, even if just for a few hours. These liminal moments would light his path forever.

“Thank you,” he whispered. _Thank you for trusting me._

The head in his arms shifted. Grey eyes looked into amber ones and Aang's lips curved into a gentle smile. “Thank you, Zuko.” He gently cupped both sides of Zuko's face and pressed a feather-light kiss on his forehead. “I'm glad to be here with you.”

“I'm glad too. You're surprisingly cuddly.”

The Air Nomad laughed at that. “I know, right? I learned from Appa, he's the best cuddly fluff.”

“You're not fluffy, though... maybe a bit fuzzy,” Zuko said, playfully petting Aang's head where some hair was already starting to grow back.

“I will be if I don't shave soon. I'm a little envious of your hair though, do you think I should grow it out too? Or maybe like Avatar Yangchen... bald on the front, luscious on the back.”

“Please, don't,” Zuko groaned.

“Well, your old ponytail wasn't a work of art either!”

“This is a low blow, Aang. You wound me. I thought you were a good person, but good persons know better than resurrecting scandalous teenage choices.”

They kept bantering as Zuko slid out from the bed and started dressing for the day. Aang didn't seem to care for his mostly unclothed body; Zuko supposed it was both because of his upbringing—Air Nomads were apparently very relaxed on the subject of nudity—and because it was nothing he hadn't seen before when they'd trained together in the past. Almost ten years had passed, yet Zuko couldn't bring himself to be embarrassed in front of his best friend just because they were official adults with official responsibilities.

Aang's voice pulled him back from his musings. “I think I'll go now. Thank you for not setting fire to my glider,” the younger man said as he took the wooden artifact from its place against the wall, which was indeed very close to the less lucky curtains. Before he could make his escape through the window, Zuko stopped him.

“Wait.”

Aang turned to face him, head tilted in question.

“When I tried to teach you and discovered that I'd lost my bending, I didn't tell you that it wasn't my first time.”

“...it wasn't?”

“No. After my father... banished me, for months I couldn't even light a candle to see in the dark. Knowing that I held that same power that caused me such pain and humiliation terrified me; at the same time, I was horrified at my inability to bend. I thought I was useless, that my father was right after all, but I couldn't accept it. I was stuck.

“My uncle was incredibly patient with me. He explained that bending is deeply tied to our emotions and that the trauma I'd experienced was blocking my energy flow; my energy was still there, but it needed to have a new path until the old one was healed. At the time, I channelled my emotions in the only way I knew how, opening the new path with all my rage and bitterness, which gave me my bending back but prevented me to heal. When I decided to help you, I lost my bending again and had to learn what I couldn't before: the only real path is built from balance.

“I don't know why you can't get into the Avatar State. What I do know is that I still have nightmares of that day in the Agni Kai arena. I also know that you have lived through a lot of pain and that that sort of wounds run deep. If you want to find your balance again, you may have to get the poison out first.”

A few beats of silence filled the room as Aang contemplated the story. “Thank you for telling me all this, Zuko. Thank you for everything.” Then the airbender opened his glider, turned on his heels and flew out of the window and into the clear morning sky.

As he adjusted the Golden Flame in his hair, Zuko wondered how deep his words had sunk, if the soil on Aang's heart was fertile enough to allow the lesson to grow and take roots. Still, he'd hopefully planted a seed that would be understood when the time would be mature; spirits knew it could take a while.

His friend was hurting on a level beyond Zuko's reach. Aang was a survivor who bore the unspeakable burden of outliving the ones he loved and couldn't protect. Living was his duty as the Avatar; behind the duty, though, there was a man who was tasked with stopping a world wide war at the age of twelve after witnessing the annihilation of his home and his people.

How could a person who'd seen so much innocent blood spilt, been through so much heartbreak, still be so kind and forgiving? Had anyone ever told Aang that it was okay for him to be a human being who felt anger and pain?

More importantly, had he ever given himself permission to grieve?

The wind that came from the open window held no answers.


End file.
